Friday decision to bunt reveals Red Sox thought process

BOSTON -- The result wasn't what the Red Sox wanted. But they stand by the process.

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By
Tim Britton
Posted Aug. 3, 2013 @ 6:41 pm

BOSTON -- The result wasn't what the Red Sox wanted. But they stand by the process.

With Stephen Drew on first and nobody out in Friday's ninth inning, Boston elected to have ninth hitter Brock Holt attempt to lay down a bunt against Diamondbacks closer Brad Ziegler. Holt fouled off the first two pitches, eventually taking a called third strike.

It was a wasted out, and those loom large in one-run losses.

Basic run expectancy argues against bunting a runner to second. Even if the sacrifice is successful, it reduces both how many runs you may score in the inning and your chances of scoring at all. In most situations, trading the out for the base isn't worth it.

Manager John Farrell and bench coach Torey Lovullo know this. Only two teams in the American League have sacrificed fewer times than Boston to this point in the season.

Friday's ninth inning, however, was different for a few reasons, and analyzing the thought process of Boston's brain trust in the dugout reveals the depth of their in-game considerations.

First, Ziegler is an extreme ground-ball pitcher who excels at generating double plays. Over the course of his career, the righty induces double plays at twice the rate of the average major-league pitcher.

Second, Holt hits a lot of ground balls; about 60 percent of the balls he puts in play are on the ground in his major-league career. He can also struggle against ground-ball pitchers -- at least how they're defined by Baseball-Reference. In that sample, he entered the confrontation with Ziegler a career .207 hitter.

For those reasons, the Red Sox didn't like the idea of Holt swinging away.

"What we're trying to do is, once we have a guy on base, stay out of the double play," Lovullo explained. "That was the overriding factor. Because Ziegler is such a ground-ball pitcher, [Holt] wouldn't be able to elevate the ball and it was going to take more of a piece-by-piece offense to score one run."

Boston considered the idea of a hit-and-run but opted for "the safest risk." It didn't feel like much of a risk at all, since Holt has a fair amount of experience bunting throughout his professional career.

"Given Brock's history and his ability to play the little game, we thought he would adjust to [Ziegler] real quick and get the job done," Lovullo said. "Get the guy into scoring position, and now those ground balls and line drives we thought we'd be seeing based on the stuff Ziegler had were going to produce a run."

This last part is interesting. Lovullo said the Red Sox have a projection system from the front office that spits out the possible outcomes of an at-bat. Even when a hitter is facing a pitcher for the first time -- as was the case with Holt and Ziegler -- the system runs through how Holt performed against similar pitchers.

Further, the Red Sox liked the matchups after Holt, with Jacoby Ellsbury and Shane Victorino on deck and in the hole, respectively. (The Ellsbury-Ziegler matchup went as Boston expected, with Ellsbury lining a single through the right side.)

The one thing Farrell and Lovullo thought twice about after the fact was sticking with the bunt call even after Holt fell behind 0-2.

"The one regret that we had was we kept it on," Lovullo said. "Once you make that commitment, you're all-in to getting that runner to second base. At that point, we believed that Brock was going to execute and get the job done, given the idea he had one more strike to do it. In hindsight, it's probably something we could have taken off."

"I pride myself on doing the little things -- getting bunts down, playing good defense," Holt said. "I just wasn't able to get it done. I definitely should have."

This is all to say that a run expectancy chart in baseball isn't like the two-point conversion chart in football. You don't look down and make a decision based solely on the numbers. There are mitigating factors that play into a decision that ostensibly goes against the numbers.

"You don't have that crystal ball, you don't really know what's going to happen," Lovullo said. "We made the decision, we live by it."